Ann: Lake Torrens IOCG Project - Drilling Update, page-75

Well not exactly

https://themarketherald.com.au/tasm...o-raise-4-8m-for-exploration-2021-03-05/?t=59

Olympic Dam is primarily a copper producing mine, not iron ore. And similarly the potential worth of the deposits at Vulcan is copper. And Rio was willing to spend over $90m on Vulcan but pulled out after $10m of exploration because the grades weren't considered good enough to justify the costs of mining so deeply. And according to GS it was the depreciating spot price for copper (not iron ore) back in 2013 and 2014 that gave Rio second thoughts.

On the plus side GS says that improved mining techniques or technology make deeper mining more economic attractive now. And if the next core is similar to the first one, FMG will likely spend the money to get to the 51% and probably go to 80%. And since the previous cores from 2013 looked pretty similar the odds have to be pretty good that the next core will in fact be the same.

Now we have FMG able to get up to 80% of the JV by spending pretty much chump change, $11m over 8 years. So they could do that and sleep pretty well knowing that they project is under their control and could be developed at the time of their choosing and meanwhile TAS survives on shareholders goodwill or dilutional share placements. So we will have to hope that even if Mr Forrest agrees that its economic, he's actually willing to press ahead sooner rather than deliberately decide to wait for TAS sink beneath the waves. I'm guessing that the fate of TAS shareholders is inconsequential to FMG so the bigger question is would he be willing to try to compete with the already established Olympic Dam owned and operated by BHP just down the road? Would BHP object? What would that do to the price of copper? I have no idea, but whatever happens its going to be a long slow process IMO.